Duwa said MESN also conducted PVT in the 2009 elections whose estimates matched the official results announced by the Malawi Electoral Commission.

Said Duwa: “The national estimates from the PVT closely matched the official results as announced by the MEC. All the estimates were of the same magnitude as the official results for the two largest vote winners (which represent over 96% of all votes) fall within the 95% confidence interval. This provided very strong evidence that the national tabulation process was conducted properly and that the official results reflected how citizens voted on Election Day.

“MESN PVT projected that DPP got 66.50% votes compared to the MEC official results of 65.98%. MESN’s estimate for DPP’s votes was extremely accurate and well within their margin of error (+/-1.8% confidence level 95%).”

For the 2014 elections MESN will deploy both long and short term observers across the country to observe various pre-election processes such as, political party primaries, nominations, official campaigns, polling, results handling and complaints handling by the courts and MEC.

During the Tuesday meeting MESN oriented members of the Grand Coalition on what PVT is all about and called for their solidarity to ensure that the conduction of the PVT in next year’s elections does not face hurdles.